American Bar Association President Robert J. Grey Jr. has presented Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor with the ABA American Jury Project’s "Principles for Juries and Jury Trials."

The principles will be presented to the ABA House of Delegates next month. If adopted, they will be disseminated to jurisdictions throughout the country.

Grey noted that the principles for the first time would address the need to protect jurors’ privacy throughout the course of a trial and afterward. They would clarify that jurors have a right to be questioned about only relevant subjects, to know how their information will be used, and to answer sensitive questions privately, he said.

Also, the principles say that juries should be made up of 12 people wherever possible; jurors should be allowed to submit written questions to the judge; that jurors should be allowed to discuss the case they are hearing while the case is ongoing, so long as all jurors are present for the discussion; that juror pay should be improved, and jurors should be reimbursed for expenses including child care; and that jurors should be given written copies of jury instructions to take with them into deliberations.

The principles and other materials can be found at www.abavideonews.org/ABA301/index.htm.

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